Pilot case: missing-ness, Digital Media and Ciudad Juarez

The term ‘ Narcoculture’ is replete with stereotypes and folklore. However, the project we are currently embarking into wants to look at it from a spatial perspective. The politics of missing-ness doesn’t exclude violence and space. Missing-ness is always violence.

Ciudad Juarez is violence. A form of violence that comes from a socio-cultural (and economic) assemblage: Narcoculture. Juarez as a social and urban space is considered dangerous. Between 2006 and 2010 violence skyrocketed and we have all seen, at least once, a picture of dismembered bodies and coroners hiding their faces behind ski masks. After the return of the PRI, Juarez has suddenly turned into a peaceful and lively city at the borders with the US. Certainly not alone in Latin America, Juarez has its missing data, citizens, stories and geographies. Missing bodies, disappeared or lifeless, empty neighbourhoods and ever-growing slum(s).

However there traces of those missing people are still ‘retrievable’ despite them being statistically invisible. The project attempts to collect, organise and ‘cluster’ online material, or images and news, blog posts, pages, tweets and pins. We have started by trying to analyse the connection Juarez-violence-missing-ness connecting digital media and data mining.